English Retirees Newsletter

18th Edition, September 2008

List of Contributors

The following 22 persons have contributed letters for the 2008 edition of the Newsletter: Paul Brians, Arthur Coffin, Leota Day, Diane Gillespie, Douglas Hughes, Virginia Hyde, Robert Johnson, Nicolas Kiessling, Lew Ligocki, Stanton Linden, Howard McCord, Sue McLeod, Ron Meldrum, Shirley Price, Camille Roman, Robert Ross, Barbara Sitko, Aretta Stevens, John Stoler, Al von Frank, John Wasson, and Nelly Zamora.

Paul Brians (WSU 1968-2008)

Having arrived at my 65th birthday last November, I reconfirmed my decision to retire after 40 years at WSU this May. Paula retired at the end of 2007, so we were free to move at last to the house on Bainbridge Island we had bought twelve years earlier.

But first there was a final semester which involved teaching my favorite classes: “Reason, Romanticism, & Revolution” (Hum 303) and a senior seminar in South Asian fiction in English. I also was still enjoying my job as director of undergrad studies, but it was beginning to get a bit old and repetitious. The department threw a great retirement party in the library atrium, where I was happy to visit with not only my colleagues and friends from English, but many others from other departments and the community. I was surprised and delighted to see Leota Day there. Alex Hammond and George Kennedy did a great job putting this event together. Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections hosted a display of my photographs from around the world, thanks to Trevor Bond. MASC also took over hosting my photo tours of the WSU and the Palouse.

We had sold our Pullman house to Lisa Johnson-Shull the previous summer, and she moved in shortly after we left in mid-May, so the concentration of English people on Pioneer Hill remains high. The night after the moving company emptied our house, we had a “housecooling” potluck party—a last chance to visit with many of our friends and neighbors.

Before we could move into our new house, we wanted to remodel it. The architect and the bureaucrats in charge of permits delayed the process for months; but at the beginning of January our wonderful contractor-builder, Steve Burdick, started the seven-month-long process of creating our dream home. During the spring we traveled back and forth from Pullman to Bainbridge frequently to check on progress and make decisions. We hugely enlarged the kitchen, completely revamped the master bathroom, and added a great home theater with a dream audio-visual system. The house is a light and airy place now—important in this often gloomy climate.

Meanwhile, we discovered we needed a new septic system; and a large portion of the money NBC News paid me this winter for the right to use material from my Common Errors Web site in a planned site of their own went “right down the toilet,” so to speak. We also decided to finish the landscaping on our 2/3 of an acre that we had started twelve years ago. Right now our new eco-lawn is coming up: a mixture of short grasses, clover, and wildflowers that’s not supposed to need mowing, or much water. We shall see. It looks pretty so far.

We haven’t been going in to Seattle nearly as much as we had anticipated, but we plan to do more now that we’re not waiting in house for plumbers, electricians, etc. to come and do their thing. The presence of the Lynwood Theater here keeps us from needing to take the ferry to see the latest foreign and independent films.

A series of visitors from the Palouse came during the summer to stay in our guest suites (we have two) and do the island with us. We look forward to hosting more folks here; but we are also making friends locally. Daughter Megan came from Brooklyn to visit for a whole month. She has lived in New York ever since college coaching people in Pilates, Gyrotonic, and other kinds of exercise.

My Dad is still alive and fairly well at age 92, living at home in California, with visiting aides helping out.

The long-delayed second edition of Common Errors in English Usage is due out in mid-October. The first edition sold over 40,000 copies, but I had expanded and revised the Web site so much that a new edition that better matches it is really necessary. The annual boxed daily calendars spun off of this project have also sold very well. The site recorded its ten millionth visitor this year.

I’ve been invited to give my Roots of Star Wars talk at a conference in the Tri-Cities this winter; and have other tentative speaking engagements in the works. One of my photos from Spain was recently published in the Seattle Times Sunday travel section.

My brush with prostate cancer seems definitely in the past now—the radioactive seed therapy worked just as it was supposed to. I’m working on building my bone density by weight-lifting, and have shed about 20 pounds since I started. Plus pulling up ivy and blackberry vines from the garden is giving me a daily workout.

Paula is taking a vocal jazz class and looking forward to joining the local chorale this fall. I don’t have any active research plans, but I am enjoying reading whatever and whenever I want (lately the adventures of Tintin in the original French and a new translation of War and Peace).

If you want to be in touch, drop me a line at paulbrians@gmail.com. Let me know if you’d like to see photos of the house and I’ll get you into our Flickr account where they reside.

Paul Brians

Email: paulbrians@gmail.com

Arthur Coffin (WSU 1965-1972)

Greetings, former WSU colleagues; it is good to see–according to Nick’s e-mail–that the list of survivors has not diminished since the last edition of ERN.  I have little, if anything, newsworthy to report.  Gertrude has just completed her first year as a resident of the Bozeman Highgate Senior Living Memory Cottage, and, as of April, she has her own room which suits her very well.  Previously, she occupied a shared unit with a series of three different roommates of varying degrees of presence. 

At last, she now has the privacy and security I promised her when we agreed she should move into such a facility.  Furthermore, the staff members at the Memory Cottage are remarkably caring.  A change in medication has also made a very positive difference in Gertrude’s life.  Almost automatically, as I understand it, dementia patients are prescribed Cholinesterase inhibitors upon diagnosis.  These medications may retard the progress of dementia (including Alzheimer’s), but it is difficult, if not impossible, to detect or calculate the effect of the medications, if, in fact, they are helping at all in individual cases.  Doctors prescribe them, Gertrude’s geriatrist told me (and I also found on the Internet), hoping they will be beneficial. 

Subsequent to diagnosis, Gertrude became more sedentary, complained of continuous nausea, and developed essential tremor (her hands shook).  At Highgate, she spent nearly all her time, except for meals, huddled and nauseated in bed.  She did not join the other residents in the Memory Cottage schedule of activities.  Although I always check medications on the Internet, I had neglected to review adequately the side effects of Razadyne.  When I checked again, I discovered that the first listed side effect is nausea and, third or fourth, is essential tremor.  With this information, Gertrude and I returned to her doctor.  Because we could not tell if Gertrude would benefit from Razadyne, I argued, let’s stop it to see what happens.  Within three days, the nausea was gone; within a week, the essential tremor was gone.  And within a week or two, Gertrude  was out among her companions enjoying afternoon tea and celebrating their birthdays.  Now she asks me every afternoon to take her for a walk around the compound. 

In no way, do I fault Gertrude’s doctor who did not see Gertrude’s daily life, as I did.  Instead, I stress the importance of senior citizens having advocates who accompany them to visit their doctors.  Oncologist Dr. Jerome Groopman’s recent book, How Doctors Think, focuses on how such meetings should go.

So, Coffin, what else are you doing besides offering this kind of counsel?  Well, there is always vacuuming (it sucks), and there are various home improvement projects (I’m in the middle of a tiling project at the moment).  Although I continue to play racquetball (mostly doubles), I was long ago priced off the ski slopes, and I have not been fly fishing in three years.  But there is volunteerism, the snare of retirees.  I participate in a program (Cancer Road to Recovery) that provides  transportation to patients who need to go to the Cancer Treatment Center, I write grant proposals for our church (learned yesterday that one was funded for $12,000), I’m a volunteer instructor in the AARP Driver Safety Program, and I spend half a day a week stocking the shelves at the local Food Bank.  Ever since my retirement from Montana State University in 1995, I have worked on call for three auto dealerships to deliver vehicles and do dealer trades.  Two or three times a week, I drive new Audis, Subarus, or Hondas.  A few years ago, Gertrude went with me to deliver an Audi A8 to a customer in Scottsdale, AZ.  It’s a great way to see the area’s beautiful countryside. 

Thanks, Nick, for all your work on the ERN project; it bears your signature. 

Arthur Coffin

908 S. Willson Avenue
Bozeman, MT 59715-5245
Email: acoffin@mcn.net

Leota Day (WSU l970-1988)

Hello, friends,

Now that we’re grandparents, Dutch and I are busier than ever.  We take care of little Isaac two days a week.  Effectively, we’re not very retired anymore.  We are tired, though.  Those little rascals go way too fast for us old folks and, as we had predicted jokingly to friends, Isaac’s first word mimicked our groan as we got up from the floor.

Kecia and Jae are teaching Isaac sign language and it’s much easier for him to communicate his basic needs since we’re not guessing at imperfect sounds.  He’s quickly learned to sign “more,” “please,” and “yes” as rapidly as possible because he knows he’ll be asked for the one he omits. 

Although our time for travel has been limited by child care duties, Dutch and I did get out of town for our mid-January escape to sunny Mexico.  Ixtapa has markets like Costco and Wal-Mart, but it also has its old Mercado Centro which is a huge series of sheds leaning up against each other with the food displayed on tables.  You can get catch-of-the-day fish (not refrigerated, of course), gutted and filleted while you wait.  There are vegetables, chicken, freshly-made tortillas and anything else you could want.  I can’t say our meals are gourmet, though.  We cook everything so thoroughly it mostly resembles stews with various degrees of chili flavors.  Fortunately, there are a few good restaurants, too.

My golf has been wavering between “better than expected” and “too horrible to talk about.”  I guess that’s what the game is all about. 

Our fledgling Dahlia garden is wonderful this year.  Evidently, they liked the cold, wet June and August much more than we did.  The tomatoes are finally starting to come in, but the corn may not make it.  Last year we planted 4 corn plants and got 4 ears of corn.  Okay!  So this year we planted about 20 plants, and are again getting about 4 ears of corn!  Good thing gardening is not subsistence for us.

Life is still good—we’re just a little busier than we had planned.  

We look forward to hearing from all of you.

Leota Day

5653 11^th Ave. NE
Seattle, WA  98105
Email: carvil@comcast.net

Diane Gillespie (WSU 1975-2001)

We’re still traveling although it is getting more difficult, what with packed, uncomfortable airplanes and long security lines, high costs, and various relatively minor medical problems—ours or those of traveling companions.  Last September (2007), for instance, we rented a charming chalet (Chateau Tête à Tête) in Haute Nendaz, above Sion, in Switzerland—by ourselves, as it turned out, since Hendrien and Bob Domey (Dick’s brother) from Rotterdam couldn’t join us as planned.  Bob had come down with a serious case of shingles on his scalp and face and in one eye.  He was in terrible discomfort and still, almost a year later, feels some after-effects.  His experience is a good argument for getting the shingles vaccine.  I had a painful neuroma in one foot.  Although a cortisone shot before we left did nothing, some strategic padding under the ball of my foot helped. I was able to get around okay in Switzerland’s hilly towns although I didn’t do as much hiking as I would have liked.

I was saving myself for two weeks in Croatia, where (after a short stay in Zurich) we flew to meet an Elderhostel hiking group in Split.  We stayed several days each in Trogir (near Split), Makarska, and Cavtat (near Dubrovnik), and toured the old towns (Trogir is a UNESCO site, Split has Diocletian’s Palace, and Dobrovnik is the famous walled city much repaired after the war damage).  We took a trip inland to Krka National Park, a boat to the island of Brac, buses to the Blue and Red Lakes and Mt. Biokovo, a boat down the Cetina River Canyon to Omis (former pirate stronghold), and a bus to Ston (fourteenth-century wall and salt flats).  Mostly we hiked along beaches or above the beautiful Adriatic coast on zig-zagging paths treacherous with loose rocks, once ending up in Cilipi for a folk festival.  I hiked even though my foot hurt.  Now I think I’ve found ways to manage the problem so as to avoid surgery.

This June (2008), I presented a paper in Denver at the Eighteenth Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.  My paper was part of a longer essay to be published in a book on the Hogarth Press. The pre-conference trip was to the stunning and controversial new wing of the Denver Art Museum.  The post-conference trip, taken by twenty of us, was to Georgia O’Keeffe country: the O’Keeffe museum and research center in Santa Fe, O’Keeffe’s house close by, the Ghost Ranch at Abiquiu where she had another house but where we took a bus tour to sites she painted and compared them with the paintings, then on to the Mabel Dodge Luhan Ranch in Taos.  We would have included the Lawrence Ranch if the driver of our big bus had been willing to negotiate the narrow, rutted road up there (pace Virginia Hyde).  While I was gone, Dick visited his son Dan in Baker City, OR, and did some hiking there.

In July we spent two weeks in Minnesota with my sister, her family, and other relatives.  We also attended FinnFest, an annual Finnish-American event that has been going on for twenty-five years and this year was held at the Duluth Convention Center.  I hadn’t expected anything so well-organized and high-powered.  Tarja Halonen, President of the Republic of Finland, spoke to an enormous crowd in the Duluth Arena amidst much pageantry.  She is the first woman president of Finland, and was re-elected in 2006 for her second 6-year term.  I wish our own country were equally progressive (in health care as well).  One of the themes of the festival, in fact, was women’s leadership. Another was the relationship between the Finns and the Anishinaabe (Chippewa/Ojibwe) in Minnesota.  The conference included everything Finnish—from every art and craft medium to history.  The Minnesota Orchestra with Osmo Vanska, Music Director, performed.  My sister and I found out a lot about Finnish history our parents never told us, and a lot about the origins of some characteristics we share with other Finns.  Dick (Finn by marriage) and I even learned the Finnish tango (an oxymoron?).  It turns out to be a fox trot done to tango music!

We’re just back from Canmore where we hiked for five days in the Canadian rockies, again with Elderhostel (without foot pain!).  In spite of one really rainy day, and one very hot one, the hiking was wonderful, the scenery spectacular, the company good, plus we learned a lot about forest and wild animal management from guides with degrees in ecotourism.  Now we’re looking forward to the end of October, when we’re going with friends through the Copper Canyon in Mexico by train, back up the coast to San Diego by cruise ship, and back to Spokane by AmTrak.  For once, I don’t think there’ll be much hiking.

In between, I’m still writing, not just an essay on the Hogarth Press and religion, but one on Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and painting for the Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts.  Last year’s Woolf conference paper will be in print this September.  I’m still in an investment club and League of Women Voters.  I’ve taken a course in water color painting, but am thinking of switching to pastels.  Dick is on the brink of getting rid of some of our apartments that he’s been managing for so long.  He’s still volunteering at the Gladish Center and played Van Helsing in Civic Theatre’s live radio production of Dracula last Halloween.  We’ve done the usual concert and play going and ballroom dancing here and in Spokane.

Writing this in the midst of the Democratic and Republican national convention PR and media extravaganzas, I find I have nothing I wish to say (in print). 

Diane Gillespie

945 SE Glen Echo Rd.
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: gillespie@pullman.com

Doug Hughes (WSU 1968-2004)

In November fell on a stairway in the Louvre. Was helping another person and not paying attention to my own feet. Shaken more than embarrassed.  Shrugged it off and continued through the museum. Following days increasing back pain and real torment on flight from Paris to Chicago and on to Seattle. At home weeks of discomfort, spinal x-rays and MRI, consultations with neurologist and later neurosurgeon. No surgery recommended and gradual healing after some questionable physical therapy. After sidestepping the need for surgery, anxiety over whether I’d play tennis or ping pong again. Though the MRI indicates pressure on the lower back’s nerve roots, have indeed returned to the games without untoward consequences. Relief. On borrowed time and savor each outing now.  Otherwise sound health and good physical condition, though this not the case with several friends. Just learned last week one has been diagnosed with MS.  Another is being treated for an aggressive prostate cancer. My best friend was surprised to discover he is suffering from an incurable lung disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Another has drifted into the permanent fog of Alzheimer’s. We’re all dancing on the edge of a cliff, many obliviously, and as the years multiply, the rock begins to give way more and more. Carpe diem is wholly lost on the young and mostly on the middle-aged.

Speaking of falling. Removing deep, heavy, drifted snow from the garage—this was a near record winter for snowfall on the Palouse—became part of the avalanche that slipped from the metal roof. Lost balance, spun in the air, and fell backward off the roof into the piled snow. This after the healing of the fall in Paris. First lightning thought an unbelieving question: you’re falling on your back off a garage roof? Fortunately so much snow had been built up from the removal effort that the distance I fell was minimal. Nevertheless, shaken AND embarrassed.

Paris. Strong recommendation for apartments rather than hotels, especially if one is visiting the city for several days. Accommodating, reliable American company based in New Jersey: vacationinparis.com. Photographs of their many apartments. Stayed in their 109 one block off the Champs-Elysees on quiet street at $195 a night.  Single bedroom with comfortable mattress (those with fragile backs take note), living room, dining room, two toilettes, superbly equipped kitchen. Beautifully furnished and decorated with 20 lovely prints or photographs. One of the most comfortable places we’ve ever stayed. 

Speaking of places. Out of McCall about 25 miles north on a paved highway through Payette National Forest is a nineteenth-century-looking “resort” called Burgdorf. Actually it’s an ancient hot springs which in fact was something of a rustic resort toward the end of the nineteenth century. Entirely undeveloped. Buildings are weathered, unpainted, some in various stages of collapse, outhouses, but the hot springs themselves are well maintained and the water is pure and hot and lovely. Open all year but in winter the road isn’t plowed and access is by snowmobile. Have been there repeatedly. Never crowded. Go back in time. Calming.

One of my ping pong partners is a psychiatrist and he agrees with me that hitting that spinning pumpkin-colored ball is emotional as well as physical therapy. This is Chinese ping pong whereby one is constantly moving off the table forward and back and running from side to side.  Need to pause occasionally to appreciate how fortunate we are WHERE we play: a well-lighted room in the lower level of the University of Idaho gym almost large enough for arena football. No one disturbs us. It’s as though it’s our own room. The $1300 table made in Japan is superb. Such a facility in an urban area would often be crowded and expensive.

Incapable of getting my mind around this:  While taking in one of those astronomy programs at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, the narrator casually stated that the number of stars in the universe would approximately equal all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. WHAT! Looking up at the theater’s darkened ceiling with galaxies shining down, wondered if I had heard the statement correctly. At the conclusion of the presentation and after the others had filed out, went to an attendant astronomer to ask if I had heard the approximation correctly. “Yeah, that’s about right, give or take a few hundred billion stars.” And was reminded of the incredulous observation of the great physicist Richard Feynman, “And out of this almost infinite universe people believe God came to THIS planet!” It was the way Feynman pronounced “this,” with a palpable scorn for such a patent fantasy, that stayed with me.

This last year my son was working on a marketing tour to promote Glenlivet scotch in major American cities. Am a wine and beer drinker but my son’s supplying me with bottles of scotch aged 12, 15, 16, and 21 years became a memorable tasting experience. A couple of those bottles are improbably expensive.

Of the books read this year, would like to recommend one, Our Daily Meds (Spring 2008). Has been a long time since a book has infuriated me as this book did. Written by a former New York Times reporter whose beat was the pharmaceutical industry, the book soberly explains how the industry, by deceptive and unethical practices, has hooked us on prescription drugs and endangered our health. This recommendation is more than for the information the book provides; it’s also connected to your continuing good health. “Experts estimate that more than a hundred thousand Americans die each year not from illness but from their prescription drugs. . . .  On a daily basis, prescription pills are estimated to kill more than 270 Americans—more than twice as many as are killed in automobile accidents.” Melody Petersen clearly shows the reason for this. Drug companies are more interested now in profits than health, company bonuses than research. Like other industries, pharmaceuticals have been corrupted by greed. Have you ever wondered why prescription drug ads never existed on television until a few years ago, you know, that barrage of ads we see on the evening news? The U.S. is the only major country that allows advertising prescription drugs. “Ask you doctor if Flomax, Viagra, Januvia is right for you.”  Do not ask your doctor whether you have nervous leg syndrome; that’s a condition fabricated by the industry to sell more drugs. As the late George Carlin would rightly say, “It’s all bullshit.  All bullshit.” 

Bought an iPhone a couple of weeks ago.  Wonderful (full of wonder) device. Recall as a kid reading “Dick Tracy” sitting on my bike while delivering the Chicago Tribune. The square-jawed detective would miraculously communicate with a device strapped to his wrist, pure fantasy in those days. Now one READS the Tribune or the New York Times in the palm of one’s hand after phoning Auckland.

On June 16th this year celebrated Bloomsday with other admirers of James Joyce—note I live on Joyce Road—by reading portions of Ulysses at the 1912 Building in Moscow.  Only T. V. Reed and his wife from Pullman in attendance. Sometimes wonder how many English majors, even graduate students, in the last twenty or so years have read Moby Dick, Middlemarch and Ulysses. Such long novels.    

Doug Hughes

1025 Joyce Road
Moscow, Idaho  83843
Email: hughesd215@yahoo.com

Virginia Hyde (WSU 1970-2004)

Dear Colleagues,

The biggest news here during the summer was the attempt to save our Avery Hall grove of trees from being cut as part of a “beautification” project. Our English Department, from chair to students, mounted a strong protest to the Central Planning agenda and sparked very good publicity, both in print and on TV. Our colleague Michael Hanly was an eloquent spokesperson. Dave and I were in the group with George Kennedy, Michael, Alex Hammond, and others that met with President Floyd, who called a summer moratorium on the tree-cutting. We taped copies of “tree poems” to the fourteen condemned trees and held “lunch-out” meetings out in our grove on the sunny July and August days. For instance, the tallest pine bore a passage from Henry David Thoreau: “Nothing stands up more free from blame in this world than a pine tree.” On our big red oak in front of the building was a passage from Wordsworth about “a living thing/ Produced too slowly ever to decay;/ Of form and aspect too magnificent/ To be destroyed.” (The Wordsworth tree has stood more than 1000 years as a community gathering place, and when we read this poem in my classes, students would often look out to our Avery trees as another longstanding meeting place.) 

Surprising numbers of WSU people and other citizens wandered under our trees, visiting this “poetry workshop.” We quickly gathered over 1000 protest signatures on our online petition and over 2500 more on a related Facebook. 

We had significant support, including the Avery family, and President Floyd (who inherited this “beautification” plan) negotiated on our behalf. But only a certain compromise could be reached, so we are now (this week) losing all of the tall mature trees on the Kimbrough side of the building. (I will tell more about this at the end of my letter.) On the other side of the walkway, we will retain five trees that were previously marked to fall.  The historic Avery walkway (the “Hello Walk”) dates to the 1920s and some of the foliage is about as old. Of course, Avery Hall was originally built in a way that pointedly spared the trees, and we publicly announced our continuing protection of them at our building’s dedication.  

My own “window tree,” a beautiful silver maple that always shimmered and swayed just outside my office window, is to be a casualty of the scheme. That tree always made me think of Robert Frost’s poem, “Tree at My Window,” and here it is—dedicated to all of our lost Avery trees:

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,

And thing next most diffuse to cloud,

Not all your light tongues talking aloud

Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,

And if you have seen me when I slept,

You have seen me when I was taken and swept

And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer,

Mine with inner, weather.

As part of the “inner weather,” I have been working hard on three books that will be out at the end of the year and early in 2009. One is my Cambridge edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, including all the essays he wrote in America about Southwestern and Mexican Indians. It represents about 15 years’ work retrieving manuscripts, typescripts, and rare print versions, then setting these unusual pieces in the proper contexts that have not previously been supplied—mythology, geography, and history. The two other books are related to Lawrence, Huxley, Georgia O’Keeffe, Marcel Duchamp, and others. So I am spending much of my summer copy-editing and proof-editing.

My arterial health condition is progressive and debilitating, but I went into “clinical trials” this year for a new medication that has helped significantly, even if it is not a cure. Dave and I enjoy each day. We have a stepson and young family nearby, and we like to watch the seasonal landscapes and a few visiting wild creatures around our Orchard Drive home in Pullman.

At the bottom of the letter, I will “patch in” a photo that shows a few of the Avery tree supporters meeting in our grove, one of the last pictures taken when all the front-yard trees are still there. (The two large conifers on the Bryan side were already cut.) The big oak in the picture is one of the few trees that will remain; it is the one that had the Wordsworth poem on it, about a tree that was “too magnificent” to be felled. The trees on the other side of the yard were targeted in order to make room for a bus shelter to accommodate the Kimbrough marching band trips.  (The English Department was never informed of this particular agenda until the last week of negotiations, when it was too late to hide it or to stop it.)

This poem must have been good luck for the red oak tree above, which will survive.

This passage did not bring the hoped-for results, for this tree will not survive.

When you see Avery Hall in the future, you will miss the fine old stand of pines on the left hand across from the former Bookie (which has moved into the remodeled CUB).

Affectionate greetings and best wishes to all!  

Virginia Hyde

Email: hydev@wsunix.wsu.edu

Bob Johnson (WSU 1957-1988)

Well, golly, Nick, thanks for taking over the Newsletter, and I’m sorry this is your last issue. Good job! To think backwards: As it says above, I retired in 1988, and I was 62. That feels like about 20 years ago, and since I’m now 82, it all adds up.

What’s going on at this end of the internet? Well, my health isn’t great for reasons I’ll not specify, but nothing that’s going to shorten my life.

Barb and I (she’s in excellent health) are still snow birds, and with our cat Samantha fly back and forth between dear old Pullman and Happy Trails Resort in the  Phoenix area. In Pullman we live in an area named Ridge Pointe. Of course, summers here, winters there.  We’re careful not to reverse the seasons.

Last winter friends sent us photographs of drifted snow obscuring our front door, so that’s why Happy Trails rates a “dear old” too.

I’ve reported this before, but a decade ago we were at HT when the temperature hit 122 degrees at the Phoenix airport. Only 119 on our thermometer, so you can see that we live in a much cooler area.

I’ve been counting up my blessings, and among them are the years I spent in the Department, most especially because of all my friends. It was a good, dear old time.

More blessings, beginning with dear Barbara: Our little kids, Susan and David, are now in their fifties. They’ve given us five grandchildren, who are pretty darned old themselves.

Bob Johnson

1410 SE Fancy Free Drive
Pullman, WA   99163-5522
Email: bajohnson2000@aol.com

Nicolas K. Kiessling (1967-2000)

Dear Fellow Emeriti,

This will be my fourth and last year of editing the Newsletter (Bob Johnson did it for some thirteen years!). It has been a pleasure for me to exchange news with you all, and I hope I have not made too many blunders in the editing. Next year Paul Brians will take over. He is living on Bainbridge Island, but the distance should be no problem. Paul has excellent computer skills and will be able to present a newsletter in the proper format. I will be around to help in any way.

The year has been, as usual, exciting and productive for us. Karen continues her work on the Grand Avenue beautification, on the Police Commission, as a member of the Pullman Fortnightly Club (founded by Mrs. Hattie (Enoch) Bryan), and as a representative on the State Board of the League of Women Voters (the last required monthly trips to Seattle). I’ve used my final year in Room 319 of the English Department to finish Secretum Antonii, the Autobiography of Anthony à Wood. All that remains now is the index, which will be prepared when I receive the page proofs. This will probably be my last year on the International Advisory Board of English Studies. I hope that I can arrange for Michael Hanly to take over the position. A highlight of the year, in April 2008, was the unveiling of a “Blue Plaque” attached to Postmasters’ Hall, the seventeenth-century home of Anthony à Wood. I had proposed such a plaque two years ago and was invited to attend the ceremony and give a talk before the curtain was drawn to show the plaque (published in Oxford Magazine, No. 277, Fifth Week, Trinity Term, 2008.

As for travel and recreation we had adventures at home and abroad. We took our last float trip on the Salmon, where again I almost drowned; spent our usual ten days in the New York City condominium; another ten days in the Beaver Creek cabin on Priest Lake; and visited Florida to see if we wanted to spend more time there in retirement (nice weather, but no). To celebrate our 45^th wedding anniversary we spent the month of April in Paris in a charming apartment on the Ile St. Louis. We visited a different museum or gallery every day and, by the end, had our fill. Side trips to visit friends in Rennes (the Beaudriers, whom some of you may remember when he taught in our department in 1993-4), Brussels, and the Ariege, broke up the stay in Paris. Before going to Paris we visited old haunts in Casablanca, Rabat, and Marrakech. While Marrakech is not our favorite city, this time we went with a friend who showed us all around and arranged for us to stay in a whole riad, an elegant three-story residence, inside the medina just adjacent to the souk. It was easy for all of us, even our friend, to get lost – and we did.

This year I will be looking around for volunteer work as long as it does not mean attending committee meetings. Travel is getting to be too difficult, especially the long trips to Europe. Home and the garden are becoming more appealing.

Nick Kiessling

510 SE Crestview
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: kiesslin@yahoo.com

Lew Ligocki (WSU 1968-1975)

Marti and I have had a roller-coaster year since the last newsletter. A couple of hospital stays for Marti provided some serious road-bumps, but all is well now as we look forward to a busy autumn and resumption of our normal activities.

The first event began with an innocent-seeming low-grade fever and general discomfort – not enough to cancel our Australia trip since Marti’s doctor saw nothing serious. So in early October off we went on our six-week southern adventure. Little did we know that Marti was suffering from a serious kidney disease that led to kidney removal surgery shortly after we returned. You can Google XGP if you want to know more about this rare disease. Anyway, we had a much different Thanksgiving than expected, as her surgery was the day after.

Despite Marti’s illness, we found Australia to be wonderful. Marti’s then-undiagnosed kidney problem slowed us down but didn’t prevent us from enjoying the fabulous country. We covered pretty much the whole southern part of the continent—Sydney, Melbourne, Lake’s Entrance (east of Melbourne on the seacoast), Ballarat (the gold country west of Melbourne, near mountains), Perth, Busselton (south of Perth, near the Indian Ocean), Adelaide and Kangaroo Island (south of Adelaide). This was truly a trip of a lifetime. We got good photos and had unforgettable experiences.

An appendectomy led to Marti’s second hospital stay just last month. This was a relatively benign experience compared to the first, but still a cause for concern until we knew what the problem was. Marti is back on her feet again and now healthier than she has been for several years. But we joke that she’s now running out of spare parts!

I’m doing fine and am relieved not to be chief cook and bottle washer anymore. I still play tennis regularly and enjoy the game more than ever.

Scott and Melanie are enjoying their lives very much. Scott has done much concertizing in Seattle—opera, ballet and chamber music, including his first CD. Melanie is leading an active social life and looking forward to teaching another crop of math neophytes. She has a good reputation here. I can’t believe how many times I’m asked if I’m any relation.

Lew Ligocki

1785 Cinnamon Hill Drive S.E.
Salem, OR 97306

Stanton Linden (WSU 1967-2002)

For a change, I’ll begin on a positive (therefore non-political) note. For Lucy and me, the past twelve months have been busy, interesting, enjoyable and generally marked by good health. The one exception to the latter was a disturbing cardiac “incident” that Lucy experienced on an uphill cross-country ski trail at Schweitzer in March, when sudden chest pressure, shortness of breath, and physical weakness resulted in prompt attention from a vigilant ski patroller and—in short order—admission to the cardiac care unit of the regional medical center at Coeur d’Alene for several days of treatment. Lucy had suffered from a recently identified phenomenon called “apical ballooning,” in which extreme physical exertion—especially among older women—produces the symptoms of a heart attack but usually results in no permanent damage. She recovered quickly and (we hope) completely, but her skiing future remains in doubt. My current medical history hasn’t been nearly as interesting.

I’m happy to report that at last my new, edited collection “Mystical Metal of Gold”: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture (New York, AMS Press), appeared in December ’07. It’s a large book: 430 pages, sixteen essays, including one of my own on Sir Thomas Browne, and numerous illustrations; I like to think it turned out well. I was also pleased and surprised to learn only a couple of weeks ago that the University Press of Kentucky has decided to issue my Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (hardcover 1996) in a paperback edition. Earlier this summer I vacated my Avery Hall office (just before news broke of the administration’s scheme to ax all of those troublesome old trees outside my window), and I’m now comfortably situated in my newly appointed home library/study, complete with essential books, filing cabinets bulging with research notes and off-prints, new wireless Mac computer, and laser printer. Only motivation appears lacking.

The highpoints of the past year have definitely involved foreign travel: in October ’07 we spent several days in Zurich, followed by two weeks in the lovely small city of Locarno in the Ticino canton of Switzerland. Imagine, if you can, a locale in which palm trees and tropical vegetation give rise to snow-capped mountains in the distance; where the first language, as well as food, wine, and culture are Italian, but the trains are resolutely on-time and the environment is scrupulously clean and well-ordered. This is Ticino in the lake region on the Italian border; we found it to be an ideal site for hiking in nearby mountains and valleys, exciting train rides (e.g. the Bernina Express) to the more distant alpine heights, visiting regional towns and villages, and pleasant boat rides on lakes Maggiori and Como. Earlier this summer we joined a (Grand Circle) Russian waterways tour that began in Moscow with several days of visits to major museums, governmental venues, churches, parks, and civic buildings.   We then boarded a small riverboat and cruised northeastward for nearly a week (about 1000 miles) on canals, the Volga and other rivers, reservoirs, and lakes to St. Petersburg, where we spent several days. This is an extraordinary city, which—for us at least—attains its height in the Hermitage museum. We were simply dazzled by the collections of paintings by western artists we thought we knew fairly well: Rembrandt, the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish schools, Cezanne, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Picasso, etc. They even have two Giorgioni’s—among the six or so extant in the world! We thoroughly enjoyed our introduction to Russian life and culture but are happy to have completed it before hostilities with Georgia began. 

Our attempted “flight”—if that’s what it is—from the steadily deteriorating condition of this country and the world also takes forms that are nearer at hand. We continued our habit of spending February in Seattle, which this year included two excellent operas, Pagliacci and Tosca, chamber music and symphonic performances, and visits to the Seattle Art Museum and the beautiful new outdoor sculpture park. Our Seattle trip also enabled us to attend Barack Obama’s major policy speech at the Key Arena, just before Super Tuesday, and our conversion from being enthusiastic supporters of Hillary Clinton got under way. BO gives us hope that the eight-year Bush nightmare is about to end. Greetings to all.

Stan Linden 

500 S.E. Crestview Street
Pullman, WA 99163
Email: linden@wsu.edu

Howard McCord (WSU 1960-1971)

I have recovered from heart surgery in August 2007 quite well, working out at the gym three days a week and walking two miles a day easily. This summer I spent five days in the Eagle Cap Wilderness of the Wallowas with my daughter, Eva, and old friends from WSU, Dan and Liela McLachlan. It had been forty years since I had been up in those beautiful mountains.

Walking to Extremes in Iceland and New Mexico is the title of my newest book, out in August from McPherson and Co. It includes details of several of my long hikes over the past many years. And meanwhile, in Paris this August, the French translation of my novel, The Man Who Walked to the Moon, has come out to exceedlingly warm critical response. The book in English went through two editions without as many reviews as L’Homme qui Marchait sur la Lune received in its first week. The list of reviews fills a whole page on Google.

Another French edition is due out this month in Canada, and I am eager to see how the French-Canadians respond to it. Two different publishers are using the same translation.

All the children are doing well. Susannah passed her qualifying exams at Harvard this June and her dissertation is moving along very well. Eva works with Tyler Technologies and Microsoft in Seattle. Julia was married this spring to Zack Fein of Columbus where she is a social worker and he is in training as a paramedic. Asher has returned to finish his BA at BGSU after five years in New York City. He is eager to move on to law school. Robert received tenure this spring at McHenry College, where he teaches English, Mythology, and the Bible. Colman is adding a Water Purification Technician certificate to his resume and is at school full-time.

Jennifer is just about ready to retire. She is the senior English teacher at Otsego High School. We have fourteen dogs, Pugs and Scotties, and two mistakes. We call them Scugs, and they are very sweet, cute dogs. I still teach individuals the course required to receive a concealed firearm license at times, and will be going later this week to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to hunt Russian Boar.

I have fond memories of WSU and my colleagues there during the 1960s, and wish you all the very best.

Howard McCord

Email: Texian555@aol.com

Susan H. McLeod (WSU 1986-2001)

Dear Colleagues:

Doug and I are doing well and enjoying San Diego. He occasionally tells people that I have flunked retirement, mostly because I still keep running off to conferences. My defense is that I go only to ones that are in interesting cities, and half the time I talk him into coming along for a change of scenery (we visited Rocky Mountain National Park this summer while other people were in sessions in Denver). I enjoy reconnecting with old friends and watching the new generation of scholars at work; I spent some time at one conference or another catching up with Rich and Jan Haswell and Bill Condon as well as with Lisa Johnson, Diane Kelly-Riley, Karen Weathermon, Fiona Glade, and Matt Hill, among others. Other things keeping me busy professionally are the fact that I got talked into co-editing a new series on writing program administration for Parlor Press. And also that I am still serving on dissertation committees at UCSB, although I’m down to what I call my Final Four.  Right now I’m more interested in learning more about literacy in other populations, so I’m volunteering in two different programs.  One, for adult learners, is “Read San Diego” and is run through the public library system; twice a week I tutor a very bright young woman who is dyslexic and wants to go to college.  The other program, “Everyone’s a Reader,” is run through Monarch School, a charter school for homeless children; once a week I sit with fifth and sixth-graders and read with them.  It’s a lot of fun, and I don’t have to grade anyone.

We have done some traveling outside of conferences this year; we went to Arizona for Spring Training in March and followed up with a trip to New York State that included Cooperstown (the Baseball Hall of Fame as well as J.F. Cooper’s Glimmerglass country), Niagara Falls, and Seneca Falls (which was actually the highlight). Of course we continue to follow the fortunes of the San Diego Padres, about which the less said the better, and continue with our interest in music. This year Doug will be singing in three different choirs (I’m going to get him a t-shirt that says “I can’t: I have rehearsal”); I am in just two, and amuse myself by listening to various lectures on music history and theory from The Teaching Company. We went a little overboard on tickets for symphony, chamber music, and theatrical events here in San Diego, but we have enjoyed them all. One highlight was an Old Globe production of “All’s Well” that featured a gargantuan version of Michelangelo’s David as the backdrop for the scenes in Italy; it was Shakespeare meets A Room with a View. And I have joined a neighborhood book club; as the only shiksa in the group, I’m learning a lot about my neighbors as well as reading interesting books.  I highly recommend the most recent book we discussed, Katharine Weber’s Triangle. Greetings to all; I look forward to reading your news.

Sue McLeod

6358 Lambda Drive
San Diego, CA 92120
Email: mcleod@writing.ucsb.edu

Ron Meldrum (WSU 1965-96)

It was a full year for us—the usual routines at home in Moscow and at the lake place; lots of visitors, endless projects, mostly of a maintenance sort. We made some trips too. At Thanksgiving we flew to Phoenix to visit Deedee and family. Cindy and family were there from Seattle and we all went to Sedona in a very pleasant timeshare north of the village. The weather was superb so we were able to hike around comfortably. Before Sedona, Deedee and Peter hosted us for an overnight at a dude ranch and most of us took an enjoyable trail ride. Before Christmas we spent a week in Vancouver, B.C., right in the heart of the city on Hamilton near Eaton Centre. We visited friends in West Vancouver, Burnaby, and Langley. At the end of that week we went to Seattle for the holiday season. The traffic on the coast is heavy as you all know, so we were quite happy to return to the relative quiet of the Palouse (though the unusually heavy snowfall kept us busy).

Last October we spent a pleasant week at Welches near Timberline just off the Mt. Hood Highway. There was a nature trail in a preserve just down the highway to Portland. We were joined by Don and Diana Roberts, both WSU grads of 35 years ago or so. Don is a freelance photo-journalist, former editor of Flyfishing magazine. Don took a number of classes from me and was among the finest writers I taught at WSU.

One of my Scottish cousins kindly gave us the use of a 3-bedroom holiday flat right on the High Street in Crail, Fife, which is 10 miles south of St. Andrews. We stayed in Crail for six months during a sabbatical in 1971 and have returned to visit three times in the interval since then. Robert Duvall stars in a 2001 film entitled A Shot at Glory, part of which is set in Crail (the most photographed village in Scotland). It is an enjoyable flic about soccer. Apart from a trip to Sterling and three or four to St. Andrews, we chose to stay put during our eleven days there in late April. Many old friends and some relatives remain in the village. From Scotland we flew  to London and Mayfield, East Sussex, to visit an old schoolmate from Penticton days and his wife. Barb especially enjoyed the Music Festival, a famous event every two years. After Mayfield and London we took the Channel Train from the newly refurbished St. Pancras Station to Paris, an enjoyable experience. In England, according to our GPS, the train traveled at 75 mph but in France it averaged 175-185 mph. In Paris we stayed with friends of Barb’s in a very impressive apartment a short distance from the Eiffel Tower. Our hosts took us to Fontainebleau Palace and Barbizon—a grand outing. Barb and Claude-Marie were graduate students together at Claremont during a one-year appointment C-M had, to help Pomona students with their French, and they traveled together in Mexico before C-M returned to France. It was great to renew friendships.

Our daughters are doing well, though awfully busy (not surprising at their age). Deedee’s job as dean of engineering at Arizona State University involves much travel, often overseas, and is a very high-pressure job, but she seems to enjoy it (needs more sleep, however, and time at home). The family had an exciting month-long vacation in Africa this summer, arranged in part by Peter’s brother who is a doctor with the Center for Disease Control (aids research) in Tanzania—they saw much wildlife, climbed a very tall mountain, visited native villages, etc. Tad (Thaddeus) celebrated his 13^th birthday in Africa, and Peter visited the village in Rwanda where he was born (his father was with World Health Org. after WWII). Genevieve, now age 9, won awards for her dancing in national competitions in Florida at the beginning of their trip. She is extremely well coordinated and learns choreography quickly. Cindy lives in Seattle so can visit us more frequently, which we appreciate very much. Her daughter Vienna, now 10, attends a Waldorf school and loves to ride and groom horses. She is an accomplished swimmer, does circus (gymnastics?) acts, and plays violin very well. All three grandchildren play violin, and Tad enjoys saxophone as well.

That pretty well sums up our past year. This coming weekend we’ll begin an Alaska cruise, so will have something to say of it in next year’s newsletter.

Ron Meldrum

420 N. Polk St.
Moscow, ID 83843
Email: barbmosc@msn.com

Shirley Price (WSU 1963-1989)

The lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer in Gig Harbor are hummers at the feeder, fresh produce from the Saturday Farmers’ Market, evening strolls in the harbor while admiring all the lovely boats, and geezers cruising around in the Jaguar convertibles that Herb Arntson called menopausal hot rods.

Our lives center around the family, friends, food and fun. There’s the never completed maintenance of a big, foliaged yard. That and golf keep us fit and flexible as we approach our eightieth birthdays. Yikes!

I’m still a FISH volunteer, something I’ve been doing for sixteen years. We live in a rich community where poverty is common. With outstanding community support, FISH provides emergency food, help with utility bills, rent, and medical transportation (our own cars and gas!) for those who have hit a rough patch. It’s a challenge to meet these needs in this economic slump. Food and money donations are down as the needs of help have increased threefold.

This hardy, healthy Scandinavian who has breezed through annual physicals, mammograms, colonoscopies, and takes no medications, found herself in the midst of a medical adventure last September 28. Undergoing 4-1/2 hours of surgery, I was relieved of some obsolete innards along with a particularly nasty tumor that proved to be a very rare sarcoma (perhaps 2 or 3 in the U.S. per year). Because the tumor hadn’t spread beyond its site of origin no chemo was necessary. I’m closely monitored by my marvelous oncologist who performed the surgery. He reminds me of how lucky I am.

The last April was Bud’s turn for a medical adventure. He has taken the statin Lipitor for many years. Because our family doctor prescribed Fosomax to treat a bone condition, Bud began Fosomax in mid March. Bud experienced a mini stroke on April 29 and was in St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tacoma in 25 minutes. The prompt response of the EMTs was a big factor in his remarkable recovery. The following morning I was visiting Bud in the hospital. While I was glancing through the Tacoma newspaper, an article caught my attention. It concerned a study of 1700 elderly women in Seattle who were taking Fosomax for osteoporosis. The study found that 86% of the women were more likely to have a stroke when they were also taking statins. I bought the article to the attention of Bud’s cardiologist. He told Bud to stop taking Fosomax! I often think about the timing of the article. A week after Bud’s discharge from the hospital—with nary a sign of a stroke—we were in Cannon Beach recharging, regrouping, and playing golf. Within eight months we each had a reminder of our mortality. We now forge on with an attitude of gratitude—and eat dessert first. Eleanor Roosevelt said: ‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is the present. That’s why we call it a gift.”

Shortly after Bud’s adventure, our elderly stereo receiver, box speakers, and Bud’s Sonicare toothbrush gave up the ghost—on the same day. We love our music, and Bud needs his teeth, so we drove across the bridge to Best Buy where we replaced all three of these essentials. A month later, and while we were still in the spending mode, we acquired complete sets of new tech golf clubs—and they’re worth the outlay.

August and September are filled with special occasions. One of them is a celebration for “The Boys’ 80^th Birthday Year.” The “boys” are among our close circle of longtime friends from the class of 1946  at Stadium High School in Tacoma. Completing his six month TDY in Qatar, our grandson Ross returned to Altus AFB, OK, earlier this month. He’s not missing the 115 temperatures in the Persian Gulf. He had two weeks leave beginning September 14, and will join his parents and us at Cannon Beach. I remember Ross at Cannon Beach when he was three years old. He loves that beach. Our granddaughter Nicole will be missing from the family gathering. She has other commitments at the U of W, and we’ll miss her.

Three cheers for the year-old new Narrows bridge! It’s accomplished all that was promised—easier travel, and the end of afternoon traffic backups. The 80 bed St. Anthony’s Hospital will open in early spring of 2009—just five minutes away from us. Yessir, things are up to date in Gig Harbor.

As the world churns, when one thinks the situation of our country and the world can’t get any worse, it does. Stan Linden’s “harangue” in the 2007 newsletter summed it up very well. So sadly, we’ve become the United Corporations of America who write the legislative bills that congress passes. There will be so much needed changes in our country’s direction until we have total federally funded elections because congress is in the pockets of the big business corporations and interests. The late Molly Ivins of Texas said words to the effect that you gotta dance with them who brung you. We need vibrant activist groups barking at the heels of congress. And that’s my rant.

Thank you, Nick for giving your time and talent to serve as editor of this much appreciated newsletter. Now, go play! You’re entitled. And to all of you retirees, I wish you good health and enjoyment in your pursuits.

Shirley Price

11003 37^th Ave. NW
Gig Harbor, WA 98332
Email: bushprice@cpu-net.net

Camille Roman (WSU 1992-2008)

As a new retiree from WSU in 2008, I am in the middle of preparing for a coast-to-coast move back to New England. We have not lived in Providence Rhode Island before because I commuted from the Boston metro area to Brown University while I studied for my doctorate. We are eager for this new experience! I found myself feeling homesickness as I viewed the rugged Massachusetts coastline in the tribute to Ted Kennedy during the Democratic convention. Chris continues to decline very seriously but remains hopeful about enjoying the return East. He amazes all of his medical team as well as me with his survival after so many strokes, heart attacks, and other illnesses and medical events.

My tenure as president of The Robert Frost Society ended during the summer. Currently I am completing a project that began during my presidency. I am working on the transcript of The Frost/Hemingway Roundtable at MLA 2007 with my Hemingway Society cochair so that sometime in 2009 it will be ready for housing in the John F. Kennedy Library as well as publication in a journal. It is a pleasure to work with such scholars and biographers as Scott Donaldson and George Monteiro. I also am pleased to report that the 2007 issue of The Robert Frost Review was just published. A photo that I located in the Frost Collections in Amherst graces the front cover; and two additional photos are included inside the issue. The major centerpiece of the issue is my introduction to a previously unpublished speech by Frost during his trip to Brazil in the 1950s as well as a translation of the speech itself. I found this speech in the special collections at The University of New Hampshire.

My foray into the world of Hemingway will continue at MLA 2008 with a paper entitled “Hemingway in Elizabeth Bishop’s World” for the Hemingway Society. I have been researching Pauline and Virginia Pfeiffer for a while in my work on Bishop and Louise Crane as well as Martha Gellhorn. So this paper offers the chance to revisit a long research interest.

It has surprised me to find that I am in greater demand now that I am a professor emeritus than I was a few years ago. So I have the unexpected but nonetheless pleasurable task of weeding through book and other options. My cultural biography on Elizabeth Bishop is now being marketed as a trade book in addition to being sold as an academic/trade book. I am giving serious consideration to moving further in the direction of a more general audience in future projects; but I still feel the pull of more academic publishing as well. Volume three of the American poetry anthology is on the horizon before me now.

I am finding that retirement offers many other opportunities as well, and I am pursuing them as I am able with my responsibilities to Chris. I enjoy watercoloring and other artistic expressions as well as long walks and impromptu chats at the art museum. This fall I hope to add in some socializing with various alumni clubs that have become very organized here. Meanwhile, I wish everyone a great year!

Camille Roman

Email: roman@mail.wsu.edu

Robert H. Ross (WSU 1967-69)

Dear Friends,

Mary died here in the Piper Shores nursing home in the early evening of last July 7. Her final ordeal began six months earlier back on the evening of January 9, when she tripped on a carpet coming out of our dining room and fell and fractured her left pelvis. The only treatment for a fractured pelvis is complete bed rest, and so she spent the next six weeks first in bed and then gradually learning to walk again. Though we did what we could for Mary, it became increasingly clear that we could not give her the care she required here in the apartment. She needed the skilled nursing care and therapy provided by our nursing home. And so there she returned, and there, finally, she died, with a few more short visits to the hospital added to her misery. The doctor listed the cause of death as congestive heart failure, but it wasn’t; the Alzheimer’s was what really did it

It had been at least three to four years coming on, the symptoms so incremental in the beginning stages that none of us really noticed much amiss except maybe an age-induced bad memory. What was happening finally became impossible to escape, however, since in its middle and later stages it was also accompanied by an acute paranoia. Three medical and psychiatric specialists agreed on the final diagnosis about two years ago. And so the inevitable spiral started its downward course into ever more cognitive impairment until she was mercifully released on that evening in July. We all did what could be done for her until in the very final days, when a stupid accident of my part put me out of commission completely.

Ten days before she died, on July 27, I was down at the hospital visiting Mary, and while trying to help her nurse pull up a sheet on her bed I tripped, fell with a resounding smack on the floor and fractured my right hip. I have no recollection of the next couple of days, but they did, I’m told, get me to an operating room the same day and installed a new hip for own fall I was now no longer the helper but the one needing help. What a Hardy-esque irony: to have taken care of her for three-plus Alzheimer’s years and then to be denied a chance to ease, ever so little during her final days! The hospital sent her back to Piper Shores because there was nothing more to be done for her, but I was not ready for discharge. Finally, three days before she died they summoned up some compassion and let me go back to the nursing home too; we were put in adjoining rooms, our beds could be wheeled together, and we could talk a little and touch hands across the hospital beds. And so it was; three days later, she died. And so much for 67 years of marriage.

We held a lovely memorial service for her at our church in Waterford, the selfsame church where Mary and I had been married in August, 1940, almost, exactly 67 years earlier. They got me there by bundling me up in masses of pillows, laying me flat on the front seat of the car, and navigating inside the church by means of a wheelchair.  It was a beautiful service, serious but not solemn, just as Mary would have wanted it, thanks to the sensitivity of our minister, Anita White. The interment was private, performed at the graveside after the service. And so now Mary lies peacefully where she chose to lie, in our family plot in Elmvale Cemetery in South Waterford, Maine, where—dare I say it?—I hope soon to join her.

At the moment, however, after a long stay in our nursing home I am now back in our apartment again and getting around tolerably well with the aid of a walker. “Soon.” they tell me, I will be able to graduate from the walker to a cane. My sense of balance ha been pretty well destroyed; I can stand upright only for seconds before tottering.  So who knows about canes, or walking—or any of that remote stuff! I know for a certainty and with immediacy that my life is now immensely diminished, for a variety of reasons.

And so, friends, you have it; both the apology for and the explanation of my months-long silence, and an answer to occasional question, “I wonder how the Rosses are doing”? Well, they’re not doing too well right now. But whatever category you are, I cherish you every one. God bless.

Yours aye,

Bob Ross

15 Piper Road, Apt. K-121
Scarborough, ME 04074
Email: rross5@maine.rr.com

Barbara Sitko (WSU 1989-2005)

Dear Friends,

Greetings!  I hope that this finds you well. This is a year of change for me. My three-year commitment to our Humility of Mary congregation’s Education and Spirituality Center ended in May after a successful search for a lay leader who could take us through the next phase of non-profit development. Our Americorps connections are strong, and the early work of advertising and building clientele for both youth and adult programming is bearing fruit. Especially in the larger conferences, we see an increase in women clergy and counselors from nearby states.  Growing an ecumenical network has been rewarding.

It has been politically very interesting being at the border of two battleground states. Western Pennsylvania north of Pittsburgh is primarily rural, and Youngstown Ohio is a “rust belt” urban culture. There is no lack of volunteer work to be done.

I’ll be taking a few months of real “time off” and then I hope to travel and assess what the future holds. Remember, the welcome mat is always out 10 miles south of US Interstate 80, 5 miles east of the Ohio line.

Barbara Sitko

124 N. Lincoln St.
New Wilmington PA 16142
Email: sitko@wsu.edu

Aretta Stevens McClure (WSU 1967-1971)

Dear All,

On receiving Nick’s request for our annual submission to the English Retirees Newsletter, I was stymied. Because of health problems, our lives are so marked by routine and sameness that I was going to suggest he simply reprint our last letter when, unexpectedly, we experienced some ‘news.’ I was speaking to a neighbor on the phone, turned to look out the window, and found myself looking into the face of a black bear. Without having met before I knew immediately that he was the miscreant who had carried off three of our neighbor’s bird feeders. He was now after ours.

I had been too smug. Our neighbor’s home is located, as is ours, on an old logging tract, but theirs is between the deep, untouched forest that abuts both our properties and where, we suspect, the bears have their den, and where there is an extensive Asian pear orchard that they love to frequent. Our house is off the beaten path and, although an old boar and a female with two yearling cubs had been seen on the edge of our forty acres, we had put out bird feeders for sixteen years without incident. That is, until this day.

Both Bill and I hurried to bang on the window, shouting all the while. The bear didn’t deign to look at us. There was an air of unhurried and sheer concentration as he worked to reach his goal, a much desired meal of bird seed. He was a beautiful animal, not fully grown but at least two years old, and his coat was a gorgeous and lustrous black. We watched, fascinated, as he bent and then broke the metal pipe holding the feeder. What followed was a comic interlude as he tried to get the feeder in his mouth. It’s larger than most feeders; he could barely get his mouth around it, and he was not able to get enough of a hold on it to carry it off. It finally fell to the deck where several seeds tumbled out and he studiously and gently licked them up.

Everything about him bespoke good health. In addition to his lustrous coat, the skin around his nostrils was moist and shiny, and his teeth were unstained and strong. And we did get a good look at them! From the window, he was only about four feet away. Our emotions were mixed. We didn’t want him that close at the same time that we watched with a sort of spellbound attraction.

Deciding that we didn’t want to lose our bird feeder, I went in search of our English bobby’s whistle. In our adventurous years, when we sailed across the ocean, we obtained it to wear at sea during storms in case we were washed overboard and with the hope that it would help locate us in roiling waters. The whistle is high, shrill, and loud. I stepped out on the deck and began blowing it continuously. The bear definitely disliked it and it had the desired effect. He ran through the rose garden, climbed the high fence Bill built to keep deer out, paused for a moment on the top railing to give me a reproachful look, and was gone. When I looked at the garden, not a leaf or flower was disturbed. As a memento of his visit, however, he left claw marks on the deck railing.

There. You have my story of “Goldylocks and the Three B. . . .”—make that “Grayinglocks and the One Bear.” As you can see, we’re still here, still ‘communing’ with nature. Our fond and best wishes to old, and new, friends.

Aretta

366 Payne Road
Quilcene, WA 98376
Email: abmcclure1@embarqmail.com

John Stoler (WSU 1969-74)

I continue to enjoy my partial retirement. I like teaching one course a semester with the summer off. Most of my teaching assignments have been graduate courses, mainly M.A. candidates with a few Ph.D. students. (We now have about 60 in the M.A. program and 10-12 in the Ph.D. program.) I also do some independent studies with grad students—science fiction and Dickens so far—and I serve on the M.A. oral exam committees. But no meetings, no committee work, no fending off complaining students and faculty (my main job for my 21 years as Associate Dean). I also have edited two novels written by Fred Williams, a local novelist, and now am editing an AUTObiography (ha!) that he is ghosting for a former NFL and Canadian League player who is using the book to “expose” the so-called malpractices of NFL ball clubs and their coaches.

Every morning I have an hour-long water aerobics session and it has done wonders for my back. Four years ago I could not walk the block to the mailbox without sitting down halfway there and halfway back to rest my back. Now I can walk 3-4 miles without pain. The aerobics has done for me what home exercises, chiropractors, and spinal injections did not do. Some of the guys in the locker room at the health club made fun of the men who take the water aerobics class because most of those involved are women, including all the instructors. We finally got a couple of the locker room hecklers to join us; neither of them could last the hour!

Mandy broke her foot for the second summer in a row—same foot, same place, except this time it required surgery and a screw was implanted. She was laid up (on the bed with an elevated foot) for two weeks and then 13 weeks with a boot and crutches. We will find out  at the end of September if she can start putting weight on the foot enough to drive. I have been driving her back and forth to work, to her doctor appointments, to her hair appointments, to shopping, etc. I will be as glad as she when she can drive again. This is the second summer in a row that we had to cancel our Mexican vacation, but we do plan our annual trip to Kauai over Spring Break in March.

I seem to have recovered fully from my double bypass operation and stroke in early 2006. I feel great.

Best to all the WSU  crowd.

John Stoler

2406 Rogers Loop
San Antonio, TX 78258
Email: utsaretireej@yahoo.com

Al von Frank (WSU 1984-2006)

Someone a couple of years ago asked me what I would do in retirement: I thought I was mostly joking when I said “catch up on my sleep.” It turns out that going to bed very late has become unbreakably habitual, yet I am pleased to report that I am now a good deal less sleep-deprived than in the old days of unrelenting paper-reading and class-preparing. Retirement I expected to be a rather mysterious crisis, seeing how much (and for how long!) one’s sense of self had been a convertible version of the professional role, and yet as it plays out in fact it feels much like putting away routine and learning life—always by definition a new occupation—with the more time one has. Already I’ve learned golf and passed beyond it.

In retirement I feel a sense of heightened control over the conditions that make new forms of learning possible.   I have, for example, been volunteering time to the Gladish Cultural and Community Center in Pullman, working with Dick Domey (Diane Gillespie’s husband) on various improvement projects, ranging from painting to installing floor tile to minor construction. I am releasing my inner Bob Vila, and learning what Dick has to teach. As a member of its directorate, the “Friends of Gladish,” I hope to help make its centrality to Pullman cultural life more widely and distinctly felt.

There is a useful synergy between my deepening fascination with eBay and my project of exploring (now that I can afford the time) the unteachable terra incognita of nineteenth-century American literature. Deeply noncanonical authors turn up every day, it seems, among the antiquarian books on offer at eBay, and I find it hard to resist such works as William Grayson’s antiabolitionist epic The Hireling and the Slave (Charleston, 1856) or William Hosmer’s Yonnondio (New York, 1844), a precursor to Longfellow’s Hiawatha, when these rare and valuable books are being sold off at such tag-sale prices. In this way I begin to satisfy my curiosity about Victorian spiritualism, the antislavery crusade, anti-Catholic literature, and other broad movements in the nation’s popular culture, as well as interesting minor writers now emerging from obscurity, such as Catharine Sedgwick and “Fanny Fern.” I continue meanwhile to find very affordable first editions of major writers from Irving and Hawthorne to Henry James and Stephen Crane. I have to wonder what difference it might have made had eBay been available throughout my career. As it is, I delight in putting together a very comprehensive personal library, and suppose that the relatively little investment now likely promises large returns should I ever develop a preference for the money over the books.

My main business for the year ahead will be to edit the poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson for the ongoing standard edition of his works published by Harvard University Press. My co-editor (Tom Wortham of UCLA) and I have a contract for a comprehensive variorum edition as well as a streamlined “reader’s edition,” which may serve a variety of more popular purposes. I have thus far been a little behindhand with this project, partly from having published a few book reviews but mainly from having first to finish two substantial essays for Joel Myerson’s Oxford Companion to Transcendentalism, one on “Religion,” the other on the “Fine Arts.” So, I have been keeping busy while managing at the same time to avoid exhaustion—and am very content with this arrangement.

The few trips that Jane and I have taken have not been ambitious: she still lawyers on and will continue to do so for a few years more, but the vagabondage I thought inseparable from retirement is also limited by the fact that airports remain my second least-favorite place to be: these I rank as a little worse than hospitals and a little better than what they lead to: the insides of airplane fuselages. The consolation of this sequence is that when the end comes and I’m all tubed-up in a semi-private room I will be able to think to myself, “This is not so bad as being at the airport.” Perhaps, before then, when Jane retires and travel time at last arrives, I can rely on the miracle of Lorazepam to get me airborne. It may be that the broadening accessions of consciousness that come, I’m told, from foreign travel may depend on a little antecedent drug-induced sleep.

Al von Frank

Email: ajvonfrank@roadrunner.com

Barbara Palmer for John Wasson (WSU 1957-1990, with a one-year misadventure in the 1960s at Parsons College in Iowa)

John Wasson and I have had our “challenges” during the past year but on the whole are doing well. He continues to be comfortable at Greenfield Assisted Living, where there are numerous activities and a social environment. I’ve had surgery for lung cancer, chemotherapy, and vascular surgery: not the best of years, but the tax refund thanks to medical deductions was pleasant. The Records of Early English Drama project continues to dominate my conscience and my time, but I remain amazed at how much research one can do at home on a computer. Retirement moral: hang on to your faculty parking sticker, full electronic library access, and your .edu e-mail account! 

Best wishes to all from both John and me.

Barbara D. Palmer

Email: bdpalmer2@cox.net

Nelly Zamora (WSU 1976-2003)

In my 2007 English Retirees Newsletter, I mentioned that Cesar and I would join a Trafalgar Tour of Eastern (central) Europe in late September. We had a wonderful time exploring and learning about the cities we visited in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic.

In February of this year, we took a religious pilgrimage tour called, “The Land of the Bible: In the Footsteps of Moses and Lord Jesus.” This 14-day tour took us to Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. Places mentioned in the Bible became alive to us. One of the highlights of the trip was the renewal of our wedding vows at Cana. There were fifteen couples from the group who also renewed their vows, and the event was so romantic and spiritual. The nuns in-charge of the church gave us a reception of cake and wine. There are more places to explore and see in Israel and Jordan, and we hope to have the chance to go back.

In April, we toured national parks in the southwestern United States with friends from Pennsylvania. We met them in Las Vegas, rented a SUV, and toured Death Valley, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley in UT/AZ, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, and Sedona, AZ. When we returned to Las Vegas, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner and a show (“Le Reve”) at the Wynn Hotel/Casino.

In May-June, we took a trip to the Philippines to visit families and friends (especially my sister who was afflicted with breast cancer). In my 2007 Newsletter, I mentioned that her cancer was in remission. I am sad to tell you that her cancer metastasized in March of this year, and after fighting the disease for five years, we lost her on August 3.

We are traveling to the Philippines in November. Some of our future trips are on hold as Cesar was persuaded to return to teaching. He is helping teach the gross anatomy laboratories in the fall and spring semesters. The courses are team-taught and we will still be able to travel whenever the schedule allows some time off.

May your 2008 Thanksgiving be happy and blessed!

Nelly Zamora

1710 NW Deane Street
Pullman, WA 99163-3508

We Emeriti

The following article, “Heads Up,” by Gary Olson, appeared in the August 19, 2008, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The WSU administration, to encourage more participation by retired faculty, has established an Emeritus Society, provided a reading area, a coffee lounge, office space for those interested in continuing their research, a secretary, and FAX, photocopy, and telephone services. The Society itself has established the Emeritus Society Development Fund to support undergraduate scholarship and research. Those who wish to contribute may send donations to the WSU Foundation, PO Box 641927, Pullman, WA 99164-1927 with a note that it should go to the Emeritus Society Development Fund.

Keep Your Emeriti Close

By Gary A. Olson

How can deans and chairs find appropriate ways to involve retired professors in the life of the college?

An education dean asked my advice recently about how to “handle” retired professors. I was astonished to learn that she, and apparently some of the department heads at her institution, viewed emeritus faculty members as a nuisance. “They’re like the proverbial bad penny,” she told me. “They keep coming back around, and they interfere in departmental business as if they still worked here full time.” She assumed that, since I am a dean, I would share her view, and she hoped I had some remedy. When I explained that my college makes a special effort to embrace our emeritus faculty members and to involve them in the life of the college, she was incredulous.

Former faculty members are a storehouse of historical and procedural knowledge about their departments, colleges, and universities; they often remain active in their disciplines after retirement; many are eager to continue participating in the life of the university; and they often give back to the institution in substantive ways. An institution impoverishes itself when it fails to tap into that wealth of experience. In fact, keeping your retired professors close can have substantial payoffs. (While some institutions reserve the title of emeritus for a distinguished subset of retirees, other universities, such as my own, use the term to refer to all retired faculty members.) Many academic departments find ways to accommodate their retirees — by extending departmental mail privileges, setting aside a shared office on the campus, asking them to deliver public lectures or speak to student groups. Many science departments allow active researchers to maintain their laboratories and continue their work well into retirement.

Some colleges publish a regular newsletter for retirees focusing on their recent accomplishments (I like to joke that our retired professors seem more productive than our regular faculty members, but, in some cases, that’s not far from the truth). One department chairman I know has been especially successful in making retired faculty members feel like they still belong to the department. He invites them to all departmental events, often asking them to serve as guest speakers. Each year he holds a picnic at his home for former faculty members. The provost and dean typically attend as well — a nice way of showing that the top leaders haven’t forgotten those faculty members. The event allows retirees to reconnect with one another and the institution.

When a faculty member is about to retire, that same chairman organizes a day long conference in the retiree’s honor. Scholars from the department and from across the country present papers and posters on subjects related to the retiree’s area of research. The chairman himself takes photographs throughout the day and assembles an album for the honoree that includes both the photos and texts of the papers. What a fitting tribute to a scholar at the end of a long academic career. That chairman’s efforts have paid off in significant ways for his department. It enjoys an unusually strong sense of community across generations, and many of its emeritus professors have made substantial donations to the department to support student scholarships and a lecture series. Others have given back to the institution by offering to teach courses without compensation.

One way to recognize outstanding emeritus professors and involve them productively in the department or college is to create an emeritus-faculty advisory board.

Four years ago, my college created a board composed of 28 former faculty members that was intended to enhance the relationship between the college and its retirees for the benefit of both. The board “provides the dean with input on current college initiatives; helps narrate the institutional history of the university, particularly the history of the college; and assists in the development of new initiatives for enhancing the retirement experiences of all emeriti faculty.”

The board is far from simply a feel-good social group. Its members have led important programs and served as stalwart advocates for their fellow retirees. For example, using college money, the board created a grant program to help pay for students’ attendance at professional conferences. In its role as advocate, the board urged the college to intercede on behalf of retirees to persuade the library administration to grant full faculty privileges to emeritus professors rather than, as had been the case, the equivalent of student privileges. The policy was changed. Because the board members are actively involved in the life of the college, their dedication to the university runs deep. Many board members have made financial donations to the college, including in one case a sizable estate gift.

Institutions can involve emeritus professors in a number of other ways. Each year my college considers retired faculty members for potential induction into our Hall of Fame — an honorary society composed mostly of distinguished alumni. When I recently informed a retiree that she would be inducted into our college’s Hall of Fame, she became teary-eyed and said, “I was among the first women admitted to the professoriate, and every day was a struggle for me and for other women like me around the country. Now, after all those decades, I feel validated, appreciated.”

Her commitment to the institution is solid but tempered by a history of lack of recognition. Inducting her into the Hall of Fame crystallized her commitment by helping her realize that despite the challenges she faced as a woman in a male-dominated academic world, the institution values her and her many contributions to its intellectual life.

Every year my college sponsors a luncheon for retired faculty members at which the guests hear updates about the college and have the opportunity to socialize. It typically draws about 200 people and is among the most popular events we sponsor.

Certainly, the dean who asked for advice on “handling” her retired faculty members had a point: Some professors do interfere in departmental business long after they retire, attempting to exercise control over policies and practices in which they no longer have a stake. As a dean, you need to deal with those folks on an individual basis. But in my experience, the vast majority of emeritus professors genuinely wish to remain involved in appropriate and productive ways. I, for one, intend to keep them close.

Gary A. Olson is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University and can be contacted at golson@ilstu.edu.

Trees in front of Avery Hall

The Library Road Project now underway is intended to beautify the part of campus along Library Road, extending from Campus Street, between the Bookie and Avery Hall, to the Terrell Mall and the Ad Annex building. The unfortunate part of this beautification is that it calls for the removal of the older trees which stand between Kimbrough and Avery Halls.

Several members of the English Department, led my Michael Hanly, lodged vigorous protests against the cutting down of these trees (see also Virginia Hyde’s letter, above). The President, Elson Floyd, called for a meeting with the Planning Committee and protestors in the Department of English to bring about some compromise. The result is that most of the trees, but not all, will be removed.

Former Graduate Students

William Gruber (PhD, 1979)

From 1972-1979. Bill Gruber lived in Alder Creek, Idaho, 20 miles south of St. Maries, while doing his graduate work in Moscow and Pullman. His first job was at the University of Illinois, Normal. After the publication of his book Comic Theaters: Studies in Performance and Audience Response (1986), he moved to Emory University, where he served for a time as chair of the department. He is also the author of Missing Persons: Character and Characterization in Modern Drama (1994), and On All Sides Nowhere: Building a Life in Rural Idaho (2002). His last book includes observations of his life at Alder Creek. The excerpt below was printed in the Emory Magazine:

In contrast to much of the rest of the West, which underwent extensive settlement and “development” in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Idaho retained its aboriginal cultures as the only real populations. Not until the discovery of gold during the 1860s did permanent settlers arrive in Idaho in significant numbers, and it was only because of the developing market for northwest timber at the end of the century, when supplies from the great midwestern forests had begun to dwindle, that Idaho was considered a likely place to homestead.

That history got a late start in Idaho turned out to be an unexpected piece of personal good fortune. What in most other places in the world counts as “history” still lies in Idaho in living memories. When Nancy and I moved to Alder Creek in 1972, we moved to one of the last regions of the United States where it was possible to talk to some of the men and women who had homesteaded it. The St. Maries telephone directory was so small you could comfortably fit it, folded, no less, into your hip pocket. And most of the names in that directory were the family names of the first Europeans to settle in that part of the country not quite a century ago. Little has changed since then. Even now you can still talk to a handful of those first settlers. Among my friends then were some of those people, people who were alive in the first decade of the twentieth century, some of the first Europeans to walk Idaho land, breathe Idaho air, piss in Idaho snow.

Sometimes in the summer I drive the gravel roads to what is left of the houses of the people I knew and pull to the side and sit for a while on the hood of the truck. Solitude and open spaces may be what we think we seek, but it is social life that nourishes us, helps us grow. “Contemplation of nature alone,” says Henry Walter Bates, “is not sufficient to fill the human heart and mind.” Nearly all of the people who were my friends and neighbors in the years I lived in Alder Creek are dead now or moved away, but it is because of them that the seven years I lived in Idaho were half magical and yet more real than anything else I have ever seen or done.

Rita M. Jones (PhD, 2001) and D. Michael Kramp (PhD, 2000)

Rita Jones (dissertation title: Pills, Pleasure, and Reproduction: Reconsidering Mothers’ Little Helpers of the Postwar Era (1945-1965)) became the new director of the Lehigh University Women’s Center in January 2008 (Lehigh is 58 miles north of Easton, see the entry of Michael Kramp, Rita’s spouse). She was formerly an assistant professor and coordinator of the Women’s Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado.

Michael Kramp (dissertation title: Austen’s Men and their Loss of Love: or Keeping the Customer Satisfied) is now a Visiting Assistant Professor in English at Lafayette College, Easton, PA. He was formerly the Director of Cultural Studies, Department of English, University of Northern Colorado. He has recently published Disciplining Love: Austen and the Modern Man (Ohio State University Press, 2007), a study of gender, love, and desire in the novels of Austen.

Terry O. Engebretsen (PhD, 1982)

Terry is currently the Chair of English and Philosophy at Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID. He wrote his dissertation on seventeenth-century New England funeral sermons and the development of biography (Pillars of the House : Puritan Funeral Sermons through the Magnalia Christi Americana, 1982). Recently, his research interests have shifted toward postmodernism and contemporary American literature with a focus on Kathy Acker and her use of Trilogy of Liberation by the Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo. Developing his work on Acker, he has begun to work in gender and queer theory, particularly in American popular culture.

According to the Department’s WEB site, Idaho State University will offer a PhD in English and the Teaching of English, beginning in 2009:

The [new PhD] program, which integrates the study of literature and English pedagogy, trains students for teaching careers in English at two- and four-year colleges and universities. It was unanimously approved by the Idaho State Board of Education in August 2008. The ISU English Department has long offered training for college and university teachers in English writing, language, and literature. The PhD is a conversion from the current doctoral program, the Doctor of Arts (DA), an interdisciplinary degree in English studies and pedagogy, which has been offered at ISU since 1971. The department also has an established M.A. program and recently added a Graduate Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), which may be completed as part of a graduate degree or as a stand-alone credential.

It will be remembered by those who were members of the WSU Department of English in the mid-1970s that we had a ferocious battle over a proposal to change our PhD program to, or offer in addition to the PhD program, a Doctor of Arts degree.

Lori Liff Dekydtspotter and Laurent Dekydtspotter (MA, 1989)

Lori wrote this to Sue McLeod, and Sue sent it on for the Newsletter:

I am currently a librarian at the Lilly Library (a rare books cataloger); I completed my MLS at Indiana University in 1999.  I was able to teach a class for the School of Library and Information Science this past summer, Introduction to Rare Book Cataloging, and it was so much fun to teach again that I am applying to teach an English composition night class at the local community college.

Laurent is an Associate Professor at Indiana; half time in the French and Italian Dept. and half time in the Dept. of Second Language Studies. He is scheduled to go up for promotion next year while he is the interim chair of the SLS Department.  He loves what he’s doing.

Marcus Tribbett (PhD 1996) and Janelle Wilcox Collins (PhD 1995)

Marcus describes his life up to and after his move to Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas.

I was born, first generation off the farm, in Indiana and raised there until the age of eleven when my family moved to Arizona, where they remain. After graduating from high school I went to Harvard (BA, Social Anthropology), and then to Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, Arizona, for three years (MA, English).  Following that, I moved to Pullman, Washington, where I worked on a doctorate. After I completed a one-year post-doc fellowship, my wife, Dr. Janelle Collins, was offered tenure track job in the Department of English and Philosophy at ASU. She is now an Associate Professor. Over the past several years at ASU, besides teaching courses, I’ve also advised part-time for Advisement Services. I accepted a fulltime position here as an Advisor/Instructor in the summer of 2005. We’ve settled into an older home on six acres with our daughter (Sierra), four cats (Mo, Mimer, Isis, and Tenant) and one bird (T-Bone). Away from the university, I enjoy playing guitar and piano.

Former Faculty Members

Ernest Samuels (WSU 1937-1939)

Ernest Samuels, 1903-1996, is one of the more famous alumni of the Department of English at Washington State College where he taught from 1937-9. He then left to pursue a PhD in English at the University of Chicago where he received his PhD in 1942. Samuels was appointed Instructor of English in the fall of 1942 at Northwestern University and remained at Northwestern until his retirement in 1971. His major contributions developed from his dissertation, The Early Career of Henry Adams.

At Pullman, he met and married Jayne Porter Newcomer on August 24, 1938. She held a Bachelor’s degree in education from Grinnell College and was a teaching assistant at Pullman. She later was a teacher and administrator at Kendall College in Evanston.

The Ernest Samuels Papers at the Northwestern University Library include some records of his time as a teacher at Washington State College.

Ricardo Sanchez (1941-1995; WSU 1990-1995)

To honor the contributions of Ricardo Sanchez, La Alianza, WSU’s Latina/o Alumni Alliance, installed a bronze plaque in the rotunda of the Holland Library, outside the Newspaper and Current Journals reading room. Sanchez was a professor of poetry in English and Comparative Cultures at WSU. The following poem is inscribed on the plaque:

O youth, o life,

o questing scholars

celebration is but another word

we sing to wish you greatness

in your endeavors, be salient

and love the sentient powers

residing within you, be great . . .

Nelson A. Ault (WSU 1949-1963)

Ault (1915-1963)was acting Chair when Lewis Buchanan was on leave, September 1959 to February 1960. He succeeded Buchanan as Chair in 1961, but died in 1963 at the age of 48. Ault was best known for his Papers of Lucullus Virgil McWhorter (Pullman, 1959). McWhorter, who died in 1944, was an advocate and historian of American Indian Tribes, mainly the Nez Perces and Yakamas, and bequeathed manuscripts, printed books, photographs and letters to the WSU library.

Ault, and later, Buchanan, were instrumental in forming the American Studies Program at WSU. A notice in American Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1962), p. 114, includes information about the beginnings of this program

G. R. Thompson (WSU 1966-1975)

Colleagues and former students prepared a special issue of Poe Studies (2006-7, vols. 39-40) in honor of G. R. Thompson (WSU 1966-1975). The special issue includes several articles on Dick as a scholar, teacher, and friend, one of which is by Alex Hammond, “G.R. Thompson at WSU.” Alex describes how Dick started the Poe Newsletter, which he renamed Poe Studies in 1971, and how he negotiated for the transfer of Emerson Society Quarterly to WSU in 1972 and renamed it ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. Before he left WSU Dick published Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales (Wisconsin, 1973), and edited Great Short Works of Edgar Allen Poe (Harper and Row, 1970) and The Gothic Imagination: Essays in Dark Romanticism (WSU, 1974).

Winfried Schleiner, husband of Louise Schleiner (WSU 1986-2001)

In August Winfried Schleiner visited Pullman. His wife, Louise, was a professor of English in our department, 1986-2001. She died of cancer in 2001. His three daughters spent several of their grade and high school years in Pullman. Anne-Marie is teaching in Singapore, Christa works for the county in Santa Cruz, CA, and Emily is going to art school at Brooklyn College

Obituaries

Sandra Haarsager (PhD, 1990)

On October 9, 2007, Sandra Haarsager died of esophagial/stomach cancer. She and her husband Dennis moved to WSU in 1978. She had worked as a reporter for the Idaho Statesman and in the Idaho State Department of Education. At WSU Sandra received her PhD in American Studies in 1990. After receiving her PhD she became a Professor of Communications at the University of Idaho and for a time served as the Associate Dean of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences. Everyone who knew Sandra was impressed by her breadth of knowledge. She was a pianist, singer, scholar and administrator. Her interest in women’s issues and contemporary politics resulted in two books: Bertha Knight Landes of Seattle, Big-city Mayor(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, c. 1994); and Organized Womanhood: Cultural Politics in the Pacific Northwest, 1840-1920 (Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, c. 1997).

Ann Wierum

Ann was born in Boston on August 27, 1929, and died in Cannon Beach, Oregon, on January 24, 2008. She received her MA from Radcliffe College, took a job at Holland Library in 1968, and eventually became liaison person between the Liberal Arts and the Library. She retired in 1989 and moved to Cannon Beach where she pursued interests in photography and local history. She edited the Cannon Beach Historical Society Newsletter for the last ten years.